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It’s too much. Both throw themselves into battle, bray and
try to butt with their tips, night rains full of cuffs and slaps.
Footwear all around is disturbed. When the
pastele
and the
bast shoe are finished, one feels that they are tired and a
little loose in the strings. Overall the bast shoe is starting to
fall apart. The
pastele
is so smug that it maintains the last
word. It smiles and calls after the bast shoe, whose broken
bits run each in a different direction: “Away! And don’t
come back!”
After that our heroine shakes off the mud that dirtied the
threshold and looks intently into the moonlight, which like
the lantern of a mischievous stone’s throw brings in slight
sadness over some friend, who drowned in manure, where
the foolish puppy had carried it.
Note: A
pastala
is a sandal made from one piece of leather,
gathered up and tied with a thong.